Text on Method

Text on Method:

Bio:

XXX is an American artist primarily working with photography. Her work uses the body to explore the complexity of human emotions and the continuous invisible transformations we experience, revealing them as monstrosities, and encounters with fantastical beings. Through the assembling of human skins, nonhuman parts, and bright colored lights, Lamb creates a fictional realm where sexual anxiety,identity, and altered sensorial perceptions are explored. In this space built by performance, intimacy, and light, Lamb explores strange relationships which transport the audience to a altered world, jarred open by uncommon games. We step in to quaint fragmented realities where we are welcomed to engage in lucid dreaming populated by colorful distortions. XXX graduated with a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2011, and is studying Media Deisgn at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. She has worked for artists such as Marilyn Minter, Tim Barber, and Ryan McGinley.


Method:

The key elements to my work are rooted in a kind of performance based photography.[for example?] In my early images, I found it daunting to try and focus my lens on a uniquely underexposed subject or genre. With the proliferation of masses of stale, common images, and stacks upon stacks of social documentary and portrait books, I was looking to create something of my own to make images of. In a fit of anxiety, and paranoia tied to cultural circumstances which I felt limited by, I started working with performance based photography and self portraiture. In this work, I essentially created a stage and played the role of my own anxiety, wrapped in color and an environment I envisioned for my personal dystopian future. As I started to get tired of working in what was essentially a photo studio, and talking about the 'image of female', I started looking for some new 'thing' I could make, and depict. And in what seemed like a masterful idea, I jumped right from my body to big, belted galloway cows from my hometown. I immediately felt like they were some grand and epic subject to have stumbled upon, and I felt that this project was going to some how deliver to me exactly what it was I was trying to talk about. After my self portraits, the emphasis became so much on feminist art history, the objectification of women, and yes, all of those things are important aspects, but in the current climate for women in the arts, I wonder if it is more important to prove your equality by making work that is equal in strength to a man, and not necessarily work that is only about the fact that female work is less valuable than a mans.[you could be specific here what work, also consider work by Fransis Stark for inst. <maybe it is't about being the sme but more abour being able to work with the differences in gender, sometimes cultural and aesthetic codes exclude those differences. But you are right, the work by women does not have to be about that exclusion, but it does not also have to be like men's work] So with these early cows, I wanted to make something that was mine-and that was not about being female, but more directly tied to my personal whims, inclinations, interests, inspirations, and curiosities. And in a big a big way, I feel like I succeeded. I love this project because the images are mysterious, humorous, and have a kind of satirical quality-especially as they followed a project largely referencing erotics. To a friend, I described my intentions for the project before it began, and I remember telling her "I want to make pictures of cows that echo the question "If a tree falls, and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a noise?", but the question was more about what happens in the lives of animals, isolated from us. So the aesthetic of the lights, and the color creates a kind of "what is going on here", question, but one which there is no real answer.[Here you seem to be talking about the ‘incommensurate’, but I think it could be articulated better– see Lyotrad “Newman, and instant” and DeDuve Kant After Duchamp which both articulate the sublime in contemporary life and art] My most recent "finished" work was the Beefcakes project. The "Beefcakes" series was kind of a collage of both projects. Although I had wanted to move away from the female body talk, I can't deny that those issues are not on my mind, and that they are not a part of my work. This project got away from me a little bit though. With my first cows, I got exactly what I wanted, but here, what I made is not what I had envisioned when I set out. And in the way, I don't feel like these images are complete, or that they are a total success. In this series, I find myself wanting to photoshop out the woman and just leave the cow. But I went back, and tried the cow alone, and that isn't just right either. As I move forward with new naked cow images, I am trying to smooth those edges, and finish the project in a way where it feels more complete. The dream on my agenda currently is muscular male dancers with muscular cows. I have an image in my mind, and I have three men cast, but I am currently searching for the right cow. With this kind of project, safety is an obstacle, and animals tend to show more aggression towards men. But hopefully, I find the cow with the right temperament, and the images will consist of muscular male bodies with the fat, sculptural cows and bulls. I am hoping that the pair of soft female skin across the wrinkly Brahman will feel better once there is this comparison of masculinity, femininity, and an emphasis on shapes of animals. I guess there is still kind of this question of why cows, especially after self portraits. I did want to move away from the hyper feminist focus, but I didn't want to focus too heavily on the specifics of animal rights either. I think its pretty obvious that I am sensitive to that. But what kind of escapes me are the specifics of why some people are more prone to feel empathetic towards animals, and other people are so cold and seem to skate by, totally unphased by the most obscenely cruel institutionalised processes. I think this aspect also can refer to my interest in horror, grotesque, and violence. I tend to think that people are more captivated by darkness than the light hearted. For example, the dark poetry of someone like Maldoror just seems more impactful than something that is lyrical and naturally light. For example, some one like Walt Whitman never appealed to me, but the dark tales of romance and drama in a Joyce carol Oates story, or the macabre fantasy of science fiction horror films. I'm not sure if this kind of writing romanticises violence, but it definitely has a stronger impact for me than softer genres.

ARTISTIC RESEARCH

As far as my personal research, I am focusing on the traditions of feminist art works, western appropriations of esoteric traditions, horror and science fiction genres, satire, and eroticism. My initial interest in all of these genres is their shared aesthetic of grotesque imagery. I don't know what it is about fear, violence, and captivity, but it is as terrifying as it is interesting. I'm not particularly interesting in the psychology of people capable of horrible things, but I am interesting in the manor in which those events are portrayed. In addition to horror and violence, I aim to pull from the imagery of "near death" encounters: they always tell of an overwhelming bright light. Same thing occurs with ecstatic hallucination, and psychedelic experiences. The place where all of this is leaning is the area I want to center my work around.[look into terror and the sublime and the technological sublime] TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

not asthetic, but the process of and prdouction value of fashion

The fashion aesthetic is an important part of my process.[what is the fashion aesthetic?] I love the affect of abstract and distorting lights. When I first started to learn to use flash and color, I was really moved by the way that an area can look physically burned, or damaged in some way simply by the proximity of the light to the subject. It has a metaphorical quality of the infliction of one's gaze. The myth of reality, and angles of perception, distortion, and representation are all aspects of seeing which the affect the lights help support. Not only do the lights alter the lines of the subject, but they are able to crate a space, and change the subjects relation to their backroad. It creates 'spectors', shadow figures which fall in another color behind them. All of these qualities help to invent these fictional spaces, in which I can create fictional events and relationships.

End

Notes Extra

Presentation:

Printing physcal quality of the paper the texture of the animal and human skin printed on a texured paper, or a rich highlight pritned on a glossy, reflective, or irridesence piece of paper.

Sculptural: Want, but unprepared to render.

Video: lacking in steadiness.

1. Where are you from? And Where are you now? I am from Chadds Ford Pennsylvania. and now, I am in Rotterdam, the Netherlands

2. When did you start taking photographs? I had disposables as a little kid, like 8-9, and when I was 11 I got my first point and shoot 35mm. But I didn't start learning how to process my own film and print until high school, about 16.

4. The contrast of nudity and animal is interesting. Why do you choose to pose nude with the cows? At first, because I thought it would be pretty amazing to do soft core beastiality images with a comic twist. I was tired of the breed of cows I was working with, and kind of missed doing the nudes. So, I was talking with a friend and made a joke about making a new series called "reverse cow girl", and putting naked women (her) on the cows. haha, she refused.

5. What specific breed are they? Why this breed? These are Zebu/Brahman. I thought if I was going to make images with women and cows, they had to be the brahman because they are the "holy cow" in hindu culture. Also, in my fair Terence McKenna's "stoned ape theory", early human tribes- their culture - was based on goddess worship and mushroom cults. and these cults came about in Africa when these groups started domesticating the Zebu, and quite possibly ingesting the mushrooms that grew in their dung.

6. Do you believe your work to be pornographic? No, I do not think it is pornographic. I think its sensual, and references a kind of darker eroticism. Like, I don't think dudes are jerking off to it. BUT-I did get one comment once that a guy did jerk off to this one pictures. He specified: "twice".

7. How long have you been documenting these cows? I wouldn't use the work "documenting" because with the asthetic of my work, I take them out of their environment, and am basically staging them. But I have been making images of cows since 2012.

8. Would you ever decide to take nudes with another species? I have tried. But so far, I have not had what I needed for a successful shoot. IE: I need an assistant. The Brahman I worked with are very, very used to people so I didn't need much help wrangling them. Also, they were in small pens or barns for the most part. My other attempts have been smaller animals in bigger fields.....they just run away :(

9. Where do you want to see your work go as you move forward with it? I want to keep making work that has a performative quality. Setting up a stage, essentially, and placing my subjects in it. Recently, I tried making still lives, and "documenting" a pig, but it just misses the intimacy and the contrast of two different types of creatures. I have access to some interesting medical storage, and I'm trying to get models in there to make it a kind of fashion experiment as opposed to the still lives. Seems a shame to waist the opportunity.

10. Are you ever surprised when people tell you what they think of your work? What's the message you want most- if at all to gain from these photographs? I guess I would just like people to enjoy them, and wonder what about that animal. I really don't understand the way some people can completely separate themselves from our place in nature, and the other elements, animals, etc. With the technological age were in, we have really retreated away from that kind of play and fun with our environment. Its now just buy, sell, built on it, industrialize it. I guess I'd like people to want to play more, and to produce less.

I think I became more comfortable working with animals than with models or even friends. I think partly because we’re all so narcissistic (us humans) and I think I can make images that are just as moving and interesting about a creature which people might have a harder time seeing themselves in.

chasing whims, or spurts of curiosity until i am not interested anymore or to figure out why i was interested in the first place I have a thought that I should do something, and it seems better to try it than forget about it.

I initially started working with self portraiture as a way to stop pointing the camera at seemingly random things. If i wanted to understand my practice, or desire to have one, it seemed logical to try and grasp that urge via exploring myself-since i guess thats what all this is supposed to be about anyway. As I continued on path that project of self portraits, I was just tired of talking about the female body, and feminism. and in what seemed like a masterful idea, I jumped right from my body to big, belted galloway cows from my hometown. It immediately felt like some grand thing to have stumbled upon, and that working with cows was going to some how deliver to me exactly what it was I was trying to find. I think I became more comfortable working with animals than with models or even friends. I think partly because we’re all so narcissistic (us humans) and I think I can make images that are just as moving and interesting about a creature which people might have a harder time seeing themselves in.

Farm animals are usually depicted in a pretty humorous way. Goofy pictures of cows, or sheep. But when you blast them with expensive lights, they take on a more refined and stylist look. Its like placing a farm animal in some high budget fashion shoot. What I find so interesting about the fashion aesthetic is that it reates a fantasy about society. that were all beautiful, and having these grand and otherworldly experiences. I like applying that same, uncommon view to animals. With out these images, there is no glamor for animals. I know cows are not science fiction sex objects, but now they look like it.

trying not to push my work too far away from myself but focusing too heavily on the specifics of animal rights, because I guess its pretty obvious that I am sensitive to that. But what kind of escapes me are the specifics of why some people are more prone to feel empathetic to animals, and to the cruellty of others, and some people are so cold and seem to skate by totally unphased. I guess that also can refer to my interest in horror, grotesque, violence, and the essentially dark and sinister. The dark literature and poetry of someone like Maldoror just seems more honest and true than something that is lyrical and naturally light and beautiful. some one like walt whitman never appealed to me, but the dark tales of romance and drama in a joyce carol oates story, or the macabre fantasy of HP Lovecraft.

the long pig

XXX has been working with photography, color, and photoshop shenanigans to create bizarre images of human and animals. Her work explores identity, sexual anxiety, social roles, and the larger scale of objectifcaiton.

cows as a science ficiton sex object

Abstraction performance Unrealistic coloring animal fantasy anxiety of identity cultural roles macabre horror satire humor

not about making sense but feeling better

--- What doe she do?

the point of isolating my artist persona from my personal